An Anti-Vietnam Song-Poem - On Halmark, of All Places

I tend to avoid featuring Halmark too often, usually only going to that well when I find something truly interesting in one way or another. There material is just too dreary and samey to feature more than a few times a year. 

This is one of those times. I've certainly found, over the years, that when song-poets delved into political or social issues, the vast majority of them landed on the conservative side of things - conservative religious themes, anti-drug, pro-flag, gung ho for the military and, when it was a going concern, the war in Vietnam, to name a few examples. There are certainly exceptions, as the entire albums of material praising Jimmy Carter demonstrate, but those are in the minority by a wide percentage. And if anything, those who sent their lyrics to Halmark were on the far end of the spectrum, particularly when it came to religion.

So it was a bit of a stunner to come across a song-poem taking the first person point of view against the war in Vietnam at all, let alone on Halmark. It's the last song on the EP, so let's struggle through the other three first, shall we?

At not coincidentally, we're religion heavy on much of the remainder of the disc. Starting off with a charming, not at all stultifying ditty all about "God's Mercy":

Download: Halmark Production: God's Mercy
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The singer there is most certainly label stalwart Jack Kim, and on the next record, which, if it can believed, is even more boring, Jack is joined by his wife Mary, as he so often was. The way Halmark had them each echo what the other had just sung drives me right up the wall. Please enjoy "Weak and Wise". I insist:

Download: Halmark Production: Weak and Wise
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At least those two songs were relatively brief - the A side times out at barely five minutes. The b-side's two song time out at well over seven minutes total. If learning about "God's Mercy" wasn't enough, now Jack and Mary will tell you all about "The Word of God", over one of Halmark's most particularly ponderous backing tracks.

Download: Halmark Production: The Word of God
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And finally, the track which makes the sharing of this record worthwhile. It's a story called "A Criminal in My Country", the saga of a young man who planned to be a teacher, but absconded to Canada to avoid serving in an unjust, immoral war, and now finds himself trapped there, despite the war having ended (although before too much longer, thanks to the aforementioned Jimmy Carter, he would have been able to return home).

At first, I just noticed the address listing for the song-poet, which as you can, is indeed from someone living in Canada at the time this lyric was submitted to Halmark, and I momentarily thought it was a first-person story. But no, the writer's name is that of a woman, and a quick web search finds there is still such a person living in Alberta to this day. Perhaps this is fiction, or perhaps she was telling the story of a loved one.

Anyway, this is no better, musically, than the other three numbers here, and a talking section in the middle, as heard here, is almost always a drag, to say nothing of the nearly four minute length. But the very existence of this record fascinates me.

Download: Halmark Production: A Criminal in My Country
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